# Myspace: can someone explain it me? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 10, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181 "2006-08-10T18:05:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/1 "2006-08-10T18:05:15Z")
I mean, what the fuck. I’ve been on the interwebz for more than a decade now. I sort of drift in and out of being in the know about the latest internet crazes. So now I’m drifting back in, and we have myspace. And I don’t get it. Back in the day, just about everyone had a really really shitty homepage, often on glurge sites like geocities. Animated gifs, poor spacing, horizontal scrolls from text lines being too long: virtually every shade of “clashing colors” imaginable, embedded midi music. Eventually, aolspeak and aol homepages were all the rage, and they were HORRIBLE. But, it was ok. The web was young. We were all just playing around with the technology. But I thought we grew up? Even the “host a webpage for five-year-olds” services got the idea that they’d better have some decent design tools to keep user’s pointless homepages from looking like total ass. And all was good. CSS arrived, web design became cool, and blogs ushered in an age of fairly decently composed and formatted user-content. And now: myspace. What the fuck? Is it like some sort of retro thing where they are making fun of having no sense of screen size, taste, or style? Somehow this thing is so big that even mainstream media-savvy things like bands that ALREADY have good websites all have myspaces. And they are just as amatuer-looking as all the rest. What is going on here? Can anyone clue me in? What’s the point of if being so god-awful? ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/2 "2006-08-10T18:10:15Z")
If you have to ask, you’ll never understand. ---
**Author:** ![Clockwork\_And\_Candy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b782af/32.png) [@Clockwork\_And\_Candy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clockwork_And_Candy)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/3 "2006-08-10T18:17:05Z")
I think we already did this. Maybe someone’ll dig that thread back up. Anyway, Myspace is popular because of it’s accessibility. It’s so easy that _everyone_ can make a page. > [@Apos](#): > > [snip]…no sense of screen size, taste, or style…[/snip] All of which are, y’know, completely subjective. It seems irrelevent to your argument if you find a particular layouts at Myspace garish or offensive, but the simple solution to that problem is to just not visit said website. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/4 "2006-08-10T18:23:35Z")
Everyone could “make a page” with a million other different “pointless homepage/blog” generators that have existed for years and years. And, I’m sorry, but no. This isn’t a matter of subjective. If you tell me that this looks good: > **[jannelisverysexy on Myspace](https://myspace.com/jannelisverysexy)** > > jannelisverysexy's profile on Myspace, the place where people come to connect, discover, and share. I’m not going to treat it like “oh, he didn’t like the godfather? Well, taste is taste and we all have different tastes.” I’m going to be 100% convinced that you are fucking lying to me, because no one in their right mind thinks that’s a stylin webpage. Even the halfway normal ones: > **[Gary Jules | Listen and Stream Free Music, Albums, New Releases, Photos, Videos](https://myspace.com/garyjules)** > > Gary Jules's profile including the latest music, albums, songs, music videos and more updates. have a “hi, I just shit out everything and the kitchen sink onto this one page” design ethic. No one can pretend that that’s good. ---
**Author:** ![Dumbguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Dumbguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dumbguy)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/5 "2006-08-10T18:28:27Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > Everyone could “make a page” with a million other different “pointless homepage/blog” generators that have existed for years and years. But they didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![MessyPaint](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@MessyPaint](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MessyPaint)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/6 "2006-08-10T18:33:20Z")
I don’t understand this kind of person who finds something they do not like and feels the need to degrade it or attempt to get it destroyed… There’s plenty of other webpages or things you could be doing with your mind rather than fuming over this on the refresh button. In essence, it is not much different than any other kind of community. And has probably brought many good things to people over the bad…Have you ever given it a chance? It’s a good free resource for bands targeting the younger audiences or comedians and a mindless place to keep in touch with friends; it shouldn’t be taken _that_ seriously! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/7 "2006-08-10T18:35:21Z")
They DID. And it was… welll, still pointless, but it was at least something of an advance from the geocities era. Now it seems like we’re back at square one, complete with the overuse of rows and rows of context-less animated gifs. Remember hamsterdance? [http://hamsterdance.com/classorig.html](http://hamsterdance.com/classorig.html) It was a JOKE. We all got it because we were making fun of how stupid we used to be. Now people seem to take it seriously with: this is my AWESOME MYSPACE PAGE!!! ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/8 "2006-08-10T18:38:21Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t understand this kind of person who finds something they do not like and feels the need to degrade it or attempt to get it destroyed… There’s plenty of other webpages or things you could be doing with your mind rather than fuming over this on the refresh button. Ah, shut up you prissy finger-wagger. We adults are quite capable of being amazed and confused by the goofiness of something without you lecturing us on how the tooth-fairy doesn’t like harsh langauge and we should all go back to contemplating the beauty of gumdrops. Get bent. Sorry: here’s the real original one: [http://www.webhamster.com/](http://www.webhamster.com/) ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/9 "2006-08-10T18:43:40Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > Everyone could “make a page” with a million other different “pointless homepage/blog” generators that have existed for years and years. > > And, I’m sorry, but no. This isn’t a matter of subjective. If you tell me that this looks good: > [jannelisverysexy on Myspace](http://www.myspace.com/jannelisverysexy) I’ve got no dog in this fight but oh my that was terrible. The other one you posted had a much smoother look to it, but this was just awful. ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/10 "2006-08-10T18:43:51Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > I mean, what the fuck. I’ve been on the interwebz for more than a decade now. I sort of drift in and out of being in the know about the latest internet crazes. > > So now I’m drifting back in, and we have myspace. And I don’t get it. Back in the day, just about everyone had a really really shitty homepage, often on glurge sites like geocities. Animated gifs, poor spacing, horizontal scrolls from text lines being too long: virtually every shade of “clashing colors” imaginable, embedded midi music. Eventually, aolspeak and aol homepages were all the rage, and they were HORRIBLE. > > But, it was ok. The web was young. We were all just playing around with the technology. But I thought we grew up? Even the “host a webpage for five-year-olds” services got the idea that they’d better have some decent design tools to keep user’s pointless homepages from looking like total ass. And all was good. CSS arrived, web design became cool, and blogs ushered in an age of fairly decently composed and formatted user-content. > > And now: myspace. What the fuck? Is it like some sort of retro thing where they are making fun of having no sense of screen size, taste, or style? Somehow this thing is so big that even mainstream media-savvy things like bands that ALREADY have good websites all have myspaces. And they are just as amatuer-looking as all the rest. > > What is going on here? Can anyone clue me in? What’s the point of if being so god-awful? All i have to say is that only bitches talk shit and ppl need to back there shit up and when they don’t that pisses me off so bad i mean i’m not goin to walk around like i am a bad ass and try and fight everyone but if ur goin to talk shit then say it to ppl’s faces and not be a pussy or ur ass’s will get rocked ok!! ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/11 "2006-08-10T18:43:58Z")
The first rule about [my space](http://www.myspace.com/jsampiro) is that nobody talks about myspace… Arrest him. ---
**Author:** ![MessyPaint](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@MessyPaint](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MessyPaint)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/12 "2006-08-10T18:44:59Z")
This is real “adult” perspective for you to get “bent” over, I mean come on… _Can someone explain it me_ It’s not rocket science…Gimmie a break with the attempt to glow your precious past on how special the internet you were part of used to be… ---
**Author:** ![UntouchedTakeaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d78d45/32.png) [@UntouchedTakeaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UntouchedTakeaway)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/13 "2006-08-10T18:48:16Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > I mean, what the fuck. I’ve been on the interwebz for more than a decade now. I sort of drift in and out of being in the know about the latest internet crazes. > > So now I’m drifting back in, and we have myspace. And I don’t get it. Back in the day, just about everyone had a really really shitty homepage, often on glurge sites like geocities. Animated gifs, poor spacing, horizontal scrolls from text lines being too long: virtually every shade of “clashing colors” imaginable, embedded midi music. Eventually, aolspeak and aol homepages were all the rage, and they were HORRIBLE. > > But, it was ok. The web was young. We were all just playing around with the technology. But I thought we grew up? Even the “host a webpage for five-year-olds” services got the idea that they’d better have some decent design tools to keep user’s pointless homepages from looking like total ass. And all was good. CSS arrived, web design became cool, and blogs ushered in an age of fairly decently composed and formatted user-content. > > And now: myspace. What the fuck? Is it like some sort of retro thing where they are making fun of having no sense of screen size, taste, or style? Somehow this thing is so big that even mainstream media-savvy things like bands that ALREADY have good websites all have myspaces. And they are just as amatuer-looking as all the rest. > > What is going on here? Can anyone clue me in? What’s the point of if being so god-awful? My niece has a myspace blog. It hurts my crabby old broad middle-aged (45) eyes to even view it. My old fartdom has arrived. VCNJ~ ---
**Author:** ![ZebraShaSha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/eada6e/32.png) [@ZebraShaSha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZebraShaSha)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/14 "2006-08-10T19:05:56Z")
The problem with Myspace layouts is that it is seriously hard to design for Myspace. They disable some fairly normal tags, so that you have to design around some built in wonkiness. They also have really weird named tags - your layers involve “orangetext” “bluetext” “redtext” etc etc. To top it all off, you can hardly put in comments and they disable the easy work around to the Hell That is Designing for IE. So, you can solve this by doing CSS overlays, essentially hiding your Myspace page and building on top of it. That is what I did here: [Zombie (zombiesingreensboro) on Myspace](http://www.myspace.com/zombiesingreensboro) . I have also seen one or two professional Myspaces that were not done with overlays, but I am in no way that decent to be able to work out all the hellish underbelly of Myspace. So, some people have horrible Myspaces because they have horrible taste. But I suspect a lot of people just don’t feel like getting all into web design and neglecting common CSS procedures to make a static, sterile Myspace layout. ---
**Author:** ![ZebraShaSha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/eada6e/32.png) [@ZebraShaSha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZebraShaSha)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/15 "2006-08-10T19:15:40Z")
More links… Article on how hard it is to design for myspace: [Hacking A More Tasteful MySpace » Mike Industries](http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2006/04/hacking-myspace-layouts) His Myspace after figuring it all out: > **[Mike Davidson (mikeindustries) on Myspace](https://myspace.com/mikeindustries)** > > Mike Davidson (mikeindustries)'s profile on Myspace, the place where people come to connect, discover, and share. That was done without using overlays. Notice how he wasn’t able to get rid of all the random boxes, as in the “such and such is in your extended network” one. Then, there is this guy, who did overlays like myself: [http://www.thebignoob.com/storage/myspace/design.html](http://www.thebignoob.com/storage/myspace/design.html) It is mirrored, since his probably got deleted since he got rid of the ads. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/16 "2006-08-10T19:27:07Z")
> [@Trunk](#): > > All i have to say is that only bitches talk shit and ppl need to back there shit up and when they don’t that pisses me off so bad i mean i’m not goin to walk around like i am a bad ass and try and fight everyone but if ur goin to talk shit then say it to ppl’s faces and not be a pussy or ur ass’s will get rocked ok!! Hey trunk, do you love to get “krunked” (like our friend jennelisverysexy)? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/17 "2006-08-10T19:31:20Z")
It just became cool because a lot of indy bands were uploading their music and kids were going there to find the next red hot chili peppers. Then all the kids were on it. Then all the celebrities that want kids to think they were cool were on it. Now it is ubiquitous. ---
**Author:** ![Heckxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f1d935/32.png) [@Heckxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heckxx)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/18 "2006-08-10T20:00:28Z")
Myspace is an okay website, but I think they got lucky with their popularity. REALLY REALLY lucky. But now that it’s popular, it doesn’t look like it’ll be fading fast anytime soon. And lets face it…teenagers and young adults are idiots. They’ll fall for anything, including crappy products and websites. Now that a big company is running the whole Myspace deal…it’s just easy pickings for them in terms of money from advertisements and such. I’ve seen a movie advertisement change the colors and layouts of the entire front page. Yikes. ---
**Author:** ![woodstockbirdybird](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/woodstockbirdybird/32/7905_2.png) [@woodstockbirdybird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woodstockbirdybird)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/19 "2006-08-10T20:03:21Z")
> [@MessyPaint](#): > > This is real “adult” perspective for you to get “bent” over, I mean come on… > > _Can someone explain it me_ > > It’s not rocket science…Gimmie a break with the attempt to glow your precious past on how special the internet you were part of used to be… Were you trying to type this in chat room/myspace retardese to be sarcastic, or does this jumble of words actually make sense to you in your own mind? ---
**Author:** ![MessyPaint](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@MessyPaint](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MessyPaint)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181/20 "2006-08-10T20:14:29Z")
> [@woodstockbirdybird](#): > > Were you trying to type this in chat room/myspace retardese to be sarcastic, or does this jumble of words actually make sense to you in your own mind? Quote Post #8 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myspace-can-someone-explain-it-me/368181.md?page=2)